BEES AND WASPS — POWERS OF COMMUNICATION. 159' 



an attacked bee. Hereupon a large number of bees come 

 out of the hive to collect the offered honey. 

 Again, — 



The best way to observe the power of communication pos- 

 sessed by bees by means of their interchange of touches, is to 

 take away the queen from a hive. In a httle time, about an 

 hour afterwards, the sad event will be noticed by a small part 

 of the community, and these will stop working and run hastily 

 about over the comb. But this only concerns part of the hive,, 

 and the side of a single comb. The excited bees, however, soon 

 leave the little circle in which they at first revolved, and when 

 they meet their comrades they cros^ their antennae and lightly 

 touch the others with them. The bees which have received some 

 impression from this touch now become uneasy in their turn, 

 and convey their uneasiness and distress in the same way to 

 the other parts of the dwelling. The disorder increases rapidly, 

 spreads to the other side of the comb, and at last to all the 

 people. Then arises the general confusion before described. 



Huber tested this communication by the antennae by a 

 striking experiment. He divided a hive into two quite sepa- 

 rate parts by a partition wall, whereupon great excitement 

 arose in the division in which there was no queen, and this 

 was only quieted when some workers began to build royal cells. 



He then divided a hive in similar faslnon by a trellis, through 

 which the bees could pass their feelers. In this case all re- 

 mained quiet, and no attempt was made to build royal cells : 

 the queen could also be clearly seen crossing her antennae with 

 the workers on the other side of the trellis. 



Apparently the feelers are also connected with the exceed- 

 ingly fine scent of the bees, which enables them, wonderful as 

 it may seem, to distinguish fiiend and foe, and to recognise 

 the members of their own hive among the thousands and 

 thousands of bees swarming around, and to drive back from the 

 entrance stranger or robber bees. The bee-masters, therefore, 

 when they want two separate colonies or the members of them 

 to unite in one hive, sprinkle water over the bees, or stupefy 

 them with some fumigating substance, so as to make them to a 

 certain extent insensible to smell, in order to attain their 

 object. It is always possible to unite colonies by making the 

 bees smell of some strong-smelling stufi", such as musk.^ 



Lastly, under the present heading I shall quote one 

 other observation, for which I am also indebted to- 

 ^ Log. cit. 



